Milan, Italy
Noon
The crisply dressed Italian businessmen were closing the deal over a big lunch; ecstatic the merger's negotiations were finally over. Many toasts were being proposed and the men kept on chugging down the contents of their bottle. After around 10 to 20 minutes, they were sufficiently wasted to the point of having to be instructed heavily on how to open a door.
The eldest of the businessmen, with wrinkles everywhere, stood up and asked for a moment of silence in remembrance of the B.O.W. attack on Rome by a rival country, which had recently been decimated. The men hung their heads in prayer, so they did not see the bullet that flew right into and through the old man's head, right between his eyes. He slumped to the ground face down, twitching. The other men, once they brought their heads up, thought he was suffering a heart attack. One man started administering CPR, while another ran for a phone to call an ambulance.
Suddenly the whole courtyard lit up with sparks as the assassin in the building to their right emptied the contents of his minigun into the courtyard. Napkins, turkey, wine glasses, all exploded as men screamed and ran for their lives. Heads turned into indistinguishable mounds of fleshy pulp in seconds, and men screamed again as bullets flew through their bodies, leaving gaping holes. Many were not dead, but incapacitated as their legs now looked like hot-dogs. The assassin finished using up the ammo, and then threw a grenade into the courtyard. He leaned over and kissed the minigun. "Gracie." Was the praise of his latest innovation (completely silent discharge of the minigun, the police would never hear the gunfire) as a big bang shook the building and blood flew up to and splattered all over the window. The assassin came out again and saw one man who was still limping over to the door. The assassin was about to shoot with his pistol when his cell phone rang. He irritably picked it up.
"Yes?" he said calmly into the phone, putting it to his head and re-aiming.
"Look, old chap, it doesn't help to have a temper now does it?" he said.
"Matthews." The assassin said, recognizing the heavy British accent as he pulled the trigger. The survivor cried and slumped to the ground. The assassin did not bother to see if the survivor was dead.
"I have a job for you."
"Don't you always? You never clean out your own fuck-ups."
"Oh, shut up and listen. You're still under contract, old mate, keep that in bloody-well mind. It's time for Omega 9-11."
The assassin's eyes widened.
"Do you really mean that?" he questioned. Combo-Contract, he thought.
"I do. Now get your friends right now, because I can't find them for some bloody reason. Come over to merry old England, and you & I will have a little chat."
"How long until we start?"
"Eight hours." Matthews hung up.
The assassin started packing immediately, knowing a private jet would be coming any second, along with Umbrella enforcers. If he was not ready, they would drag to him to England with insufficient equipment. He could not stand having to do jobs with poor quality. It irritated him, and he could not do a job angry.
Seconds after he was ready, there were raps on the door. The assassin opened it, bags in his arms. The Tyrant, hidden in a gigantic trench coat, picked up the heaviest bags and silently ushered the assassin away from the building. He had not collected payment for the job he had just completed, but that money would pale in comparison to the cash he would be about to collect. It all depended on how the mission worked.
London, England
7 p.m.
Mullet walked down the streets aimlessly, the many pints of beer in his body adding to the shakiness in his step. A combo-contract Omega 9-11, the whole team brought in, and the biggest bloody payoff in Umbrella history. I'm never going to live through this, he complained to himself, ambling on down through an alley. A hobo stopped him and asked him for money.
"Haven't got any on me, chap. I could give you a coupon for dinner, would that be alright?" he inquired. The hobo nodded emphatically, adding "Oh, yeah." Mullet led him down to a café, gave him the coupon, and almost shoved him threw the door, the hobo was thanking him so often.
A hooded figure approached Mullet, who didn't notice the figure because his head was hanging over the ground, counting his footsteps. Suddenly the Tyrant touched him. "Jesus Christ!" Mullet cried out as a Tyrant in a trench coat approached him, beckoning. Mullet thought for sure he would die, but then he checked his watch and sighed with relief. 7:20 P.M. That was the time to start assembling for the briefing. Mullet couldn't say he liked to be within 3,000 miles of the fellows, but that Yank Statham could talk to them easy as pie. Mullet wished he could do that, talk to the coldest killers in the world like they were poker buddies. And the coldest of them all, we don't even know his bloody name! Why did I ever sign up with these people? He complained further.
Mullet rode up the elevator with the Tyrant right behind him, his hands shaking. If I get caught... Mullet didn't think about the consequences; he would have peed in his pants. He tried to make his hands stop shaking; grabbing the unused disc in his pocket to make sure it was there. The elevator stopped and he got out, the Tyrant staying behind. Mullet walked down to his benefactor's office and opened the door.
The room was massive, big enough to stage a friendly pickup game of rugby, which rumor has it Matthews did do once in a while. That and the orgy rumors, Mullet thought to himself as he walked over to his seat, right across from the killers. Matthews sat in the center, Statham to the right, and Mullet to the left, across the rectangular table from the assassins.
Vincent Statham was Matthews's other exec, a cold-blooded killer like the rest of them, as Mullet would say; only he had an Italian suit on to hide his ulterior demeanor. An ex Navy SEAL, Statham was still in good shape at the age of 53. He had earned the nickname 'Uncle Gramps' as he talked about how much he loved America and what he used to do when he was their age. He signed up with Umbrella as commander of an elite U.B.C.S. team, only to be deemed unsuited for the job and relocated to management. Matthews had met him once and they found that together no one would stand a corporate-edge chance. Matthews had the charm, and Statham had the plan in the back of his mind as he let the diplomat do the talking.
Matthews picked up a piece of paper, and looked at it. He reverted his eyes to the assassins, then back to the paper. The assassins sat silent, waiting. He checked his watch. 8 P.M. Suddenly he leaned forward and spoke.
"Gentlemen, you have no idea how hard it is going to be to select my choices for this specific mission. You are all top-notch, the best in your league, the best in any league. None of you have failed, and none of you have ever missed an objective. But I must tell you; this job is so colossal that it will have need of 6 out of the 12 of you. I will now read off the list. Remember, these are your personas, not your real names." Matthews leaned back and gave the piece of paper to Statham. Statham stood up and read the list off.
"If your name is called, stand up, state your persona and specialty, and then enter the door to your left where you will receive your briefing. If not, goodbye. Overseer." A man with a Jolly Roger tattooed on his forehead grinned and stood up.
"Overseer. Torture authority." He got up and entered the double-door to his left, smirking all the while.
Statham called out the next man. "Heywood J'Blowmee. And let me add that is the worst idea for an assassin I've heard in a while. This isn't stand-up comedy." Another man stood up. "Actually, I've changed that to Morpheus. Sniper specialist." A thick Australian accent replied.
"Dieter Rommel."
"Dieter Rommel, demolitions expert."
"Stompbox."
"Stompbox, hacker extraordinaire."
"Ghost."
"Ghost, skilled in gathering intelligence."
"And finally, as commander of this mission, Mercenary."
Mercenary was the assassin in Italy, a man who looked like he had had a sword run through his face. Legend surrounded this man in the black market like the Umbrella topic message board's Silver Scythe. Rumor has it he had taken out a renegade Nemesis in a lab all by himself, after sucking all the air out and killing anything that breathed. Rumor has it he was a Bio-experiment, but escaped and was able to act and lead a normal life, albeit he was kept under strict company surveillance. Rumor has it he could kill a zombie with his own hands. Mercenary stood up.
"Mercenary, weapons expert." He said quietly. And with that, he left the room.
Matthews got up and opened his arms in what seemed a gracious gesture. "I must thank you all again for being so gracious in not being chosen. You may leave now." The men got up and started to leave the room when Matthews heard something in an earpiece in his left ear and stopped them. "Gentlemen, I have received word that certain undesirable data will become introduced to the general public unless certain demands are met."
Matthews pressed a button. "Sorry to be melodramatic, but one of those is that you all must not leave this room." Guns were trained on Matthews almost instantly, but a Tyrant had left the elevator and was blocking the bullets that had threatened to hit his boss. Slowly the Tyrant reached one of the assassins who was dumb enough to be frozen in his tracks. In a move so swift the human eye could barely catch, the Tyrant successfully sliced the man in half, blood spraying everywhere. The other assassins continued to fire, but their fate was sealed.
Mullet sat there in utter terror, watching these killers be ripped apart, lacerations gushing deep red blood onto the designer carpet. Matthews had left the room, but Mullet stayed there, too frightened to move. His hand finally moved and felt his crotch. He couldn't believe he had pissed himself. He reached again for the CD with the bug in it. Suddenly it started vibrating. Mullet became even more terrified. Someone has found out I have the disk, he told himself, but then realized that was foolish. He calmed down a tiny bit and left the room to clean himself.
Mercenary rotated his head, popping many bones along the way. He was the only one who had left a bug in the room to his right, so only he could hear the screams. All according to plan, so things will work out well, he thought, as he half-listened to Statham giving detailed instructions. He also heard the smallest disturbance of static in his signal, deducing that a different electronic signal was in the room along with his bug. Can't be active electrical, Matthews pushed the button and it sounded fine. No, this has to be a different type of bug. Of course! He remembered. The one bug he had not programmed to be ignored. A bug that was in a CD, which would normally be a virus or something to indicate a piggyback slurp. He pushed his left ear, which would locate the precise location of the CD bug, and transmit the location with the floor plan to his home terminal. A small beep in his ear confirmed the location. Excellent, he thought, a smirk growing on his face.
'We drown ourselves in information, looking for knowledge.'
Author's note: A Jolly Roger is a skull-and-crossbones.
Noon
The crisply dressed Italian businessmen were closing the deal over a big lunch; ecstatic the merger's negotiations were finally over. Many toasts were being proposed and the men kept on chugging down the contents of their bottle. After around 10 to 20 minutes, they were sufficiently wasted to the point of having to be instructed heavily on how to open a door.
The eldest of the businessmen, with wrinkles everywhere, stood up and asked for a moment of silence in remembrance of the B.O.W. attack on Rome by a rival country, which had recently been decimated. The men hung their heads in prayer, so they did not see the bullet that flew right into and through the old man's head, right between his eyes. He slumped to the ground face down, twitching. The other men, once they brought their heads up, thought he was suffering a heart attack. One man started administering CPR, while another ran for a phone to call an ambulance.
Suddenly the whole courtyard lit up with sparks as the assassin in the building to their right emptied the contents of his minigun into the courtyard. Napkins, turkey, wine glasses, all exploded as men screamed and ran for their lives. Heads turned into indistinguishable mounds of fleshy pulp in seconds, and men screamed again as bullets flew through their bodies, leaving gaping holes. Many were not dead, but incapacitated as their legs now looked like hot-dogs. The assassin finished using up the ammo, and then threw a grenade into the courtyard. He leaned over and kissed the minigun. "Gracie." Was the praise of his latest innovation (completely silent discharge of the minigun, the police would never hear the gunfire) as a big bang shook the building and blood flew up to and splattered all over the window. The assassin came out again and saw one man who was still limping over to the door. The assassin was about to shoot with his pistol when his cell phone rang. He irritably picked it up.
"Yes?" he said calmly into the phone, putting it to his head and re-aiming.
"Look, old chap, it doesn't help to have a temper now does it?" he said.
"Matthews." The assassin said, recognizing the heavy British accent as he pulled the trigger. The survivor cried and slumped to the ground. The assassin did not bother to see if the survivor was dead.
"I have a job for you."
"Don't you always? You never clean out your own fuck-ups."
"Oh, shut up and listen. You're still under contract, old mate, keep that in bloody-well mind. It's time for Omega 9-11."
The assassin's eyes widened.
"Do you really mean that?" he questioned. Combo-Contract, he thought.
"I do. Now get your friends right now, because I can't find them for some bloody reason. Come over to merry old England, and you & I will have a little chat."
"How long until we start?"
"Eight hours." Matthews hung up.
The assassin started packing immediately, knowing a private jet would be coming any second, along with Umbrella enforcers. If he was not ready, they would drag to him to England with insufficient equipment. He could not stand having to do jobs with poor quality. It irritated him, and he could not do a job angry.
Seconds after he was ready, there were raps on the door. The assassin opened it, bags in his arms. The Tyrant, hidden in a gigantic trench coat, picked up the heaviest bags and silently ushered the assassin away from the building. He had not collected payment for the job he had just completed, but that money would pale in comparison to the cash he would be about to collect. It all depended on how the mission worked.
London, England
7 p.m.
Mullet walked down the streets aimlessly, the many pints of beer in his body adding to the shakiness in his step. A combo-contract Omega 9-11, the whole team brought in, and the biggest bloody payoff in Umbrella history. I'm never going to live through this, he complained to himself, ambling on down through an alley. A hobo stopped him and asked him for money.
"Haven't got any on me, chap. I could give you a coupon for dinner, would that be alright?" he inquired. The hobo nodded emphatically, adding "Oh, yeah." Mullet led him down to a café, gave him the coupon, and almost shoved him threw the door, the hobo was thanking him so often.
A hooded figure approached Mullet, who didn't notice the figure because his head was hanging over the ground, counting his footsteps. Suddenly the Tyrant touched him. "Jesus Christ!" Mullet cried out as a Tyrant in a trench coat approached him, beckoning. Mullet thought for sure he would die, but then he checked his watch and sighed with relief. 7:20 P.M. That was the time to start assembling for the briefing. Mullet couldn't say he liked to be within 3,000 miles of the fellows, but that Yank Statham could talk to them easy as pie. Mullet wished he could do that, talk to the coldest killers in the world like they were poker buddies. And the coldest of them all, we don't even know his bloody name! Why did I ever sign up with these people? He complained further.
Mullet rode up the elevator with the Tyrant right behind him, his hands shaking. If I get caught... Mullet didn't think about the consequences; he would have peed in his pants. He tried to make his hands stop shaking; grabbing the unused disc in his pocket to make sure it was there. The elevator stopped and he got out, the Tyrant staying behind. Mullet walked down to his benefactor's office and opened the door.
The room was massive, big enough to stage a friendly pickup game of rugby, which rumor has it Matthews did do once in a while. That and the orgy rumors, Mullet thought to himself as he walked over to his seat, right across from the killers. Matthews sat in the center, Statham to the right, and Mullet to the left, across the rectangular table from the assassins.
Vincent Statham was Matthews's other exec, a cold-blooded killer like the rest of them, as Mullet would say; only he had an Italian suit on to hide his ulterior demeanor. An ex Navy SEAL, Statham was still in good shape at the age of 53. He had earned the nickname 'Uncle Gramps' as he talked about how much he loved America and what he used to do when he was their age. He signed up with Umbrella as commander of an elite U.B.C.S. team, only to be deemed unsuited for the job and relocated to management. Matthews had met him once and they found that together no one would stand a corporate-edge chance. Matthews had the charm, and Statham had the plan in the back of his mind as he let the diplomat do the talking.
Matthews picked up a piece of paper, and looked at it. He reverted his eyes to the assassins, then back to the paper. The assassins sat silent, waiting. He checked his watch. 8 P.M. Suddenly he leaned forward and spoke.
"Gentlemen, you have no idea how hard it is going to be to select my choices for this specific mission. You are all top-notch, the best in your league, the best in any league. None of you have failed, and none of you have ever missed an objective. But I must tell you; this job is so colossal that it will have need of 6 out of the 12 of you. I will now read off the list. Remember, these are your personas, not your real names." Matthews leaned back and gave the piece of paper to Statham. Statham stood up and read the list off.
"If your name is called, stand up, state your persona and specialty, and then enter the door to your left where you will receive your briefing. If not, goodbye. Overseer." A man with a Jolly Roger tattooed on his forehead grinned and stood up.
"Overseer. Torture authority." He got up and entered the double-door to his left, smirking all the while.
Statham called out the next man. "Heywood J'Blowmee. And let me add that is the worst idea for an assassin I've heard in a while. This isn't stand-up comedy." Another man stood up. "Actually, I've changed that to Morpheus. Sniper specialist." A thick Australian accent replied.
"Dieter Rommel."
"Dieter Rommel, demolitions expert."
"Stompbox."
"Stompbox, hacker extraordinaire."
"Ghost."
"Ghost, skilled in gathering intelligence."
"And finally, as commander of this mission, Mercenary."
Mercenary was the assassin in Italy, a man who looked like he had had a sword run through his face. Legend surrounded this man in the black market like the Umbrella topic message board's Silver Scythe. Rumor has it he had taken out a renegade Nemesis in a lab all by himself, after sucking all the air out and killing anything that breathed. Rumor has it he was a Bio-experiment, but escaped and was able to act and lead a normal life, albeit he was kept under strict company surveillance. Rumor has it he could kill a zombie with his own hands. Mercenary stood up.
"Mercenary, weapons expert." He said quietly. And with that, he left the room.
Matthews got up and opened his arms in what seemed a gracious gesture. "I must thank you all again for being so gracious in not being chosen. You may leave now." The men got up and started to leave the room when Matthews heard something in an earpiece in his left ear and stopped them. "Gentlemen, I have received word that certain undesirable data will become introduced to the general public unless certain demands are met."
Matthews pressed a button. "Sorry to be melodramatic, but one of those is that you all must not leave this room." Guns were trained on Matthews almost instantly, but a Tyrant had left the elevator and was blocking the bullets that had threatened to hit his boss. Slowly the Tyrant reached one of the assassins who was dumb enough to be frozen in his tracks. In a move so swift the human eye could barely catch, the Tyrant successfully sliced the man in half, blood spraying everywhere. The other assassins continued to fire, but their fate was sealed.
Mullet sat there in utter terror, watching these killers be ripped apart, lacerations gushing deep red blood onto the designer carpet. Matthews had left the room, but Mullet stayed there, too frightened to move. His hand finally moved and felt his crotch. He couldn't believe he had pissed himself. He reached again for the CD with the bug in it. Suddenly it started vibrating. Mullet became even more terrified. Someone has found out I have the disk, he told himself, but then realized that was foolish. He calmed down a tiny bit and left the room to clean himself.
Mercenary rotated his head, popping many bones along the way. He was the only one who had left a bug in the room to his right, so only he could hear the screams. All according to plan, so things will work out well, he thought, as he half-listened to Statham giving detailed instructions. He also heard the smallest disturbance of static in his signal, deducing that a different electronic signal was in the room along with his bug. Can't be active electrical, Matthews pushed the button and it sounded fine. No, this has to be a different type of bug. Of course! He remembered. The one bug he had not programmed to be ignored. A bug that was in a CD, which would normally be a virus or something to indicate a piggyback slurp. He pushed his left ear, which would locate the precise location of the CD bug, and transmit the location with the floor plan to his home terminal. A small beep in his ear confirmed the location. Excellent, he thought, a smirk growing on his face.
'We drown ourselves in information, looking for knowledge.'
Author's note: A Jolly Roger is a skull-and-crossbones.
